]]>A range of religious groups were among those supporting President Obama’s announcement this week of new measures to curb gun violence. Managing editor Kim Lawton and guest host Hari Sreenivasan discuss the significance of this issue for people of many faiths.

]]>Seventeen people were injured by gunfire last Sunday night (Nov. 22) during a block party in the Upper Ninth Ward of New Orleans. Rev. Troy Lawrence Sr. of Reaping the Harvest, a Full Gospel Baptist Church on Dauphine Street in the Lower Ninth Ward, spoke to R&E about gun violence last summer at a peace festival sponsored by the city:

PASTOR TROY LAWRENCE SR. (Reaping the Harvest): As being a pastor in this day and time you can’t be in the pulpit, you have to be out of the pulpit. Cause the problem isn’t in the church. It’s on the outside of the church. We have to be more active in the community. I do have a message for young men. And, the message is really simple. You know, we have to trust God. When we get to the place where we trust him, we’ll serve him. We just have to not look back but look forward. If we can get the people to think different, they’ll do something different. They will never do nothing different if they never think different. We have to make sure in order for the kids to change, the parents have to change. Because they have to see it in the parents. And the kids wanna follow but if they have nothing to follow, they’re gonna follow what they see in the street. They’ve been trained through friends, they’ve been trained through peer pressure, picking up a knife, picking up a gun, through violence. When we can train them on a spiritual level now we’re bringing them back to the basics. We must know what our kids doing, where they at. We must get involved with the kids because that’s what this is about. I tell you that if we can change the kids, we can have a better world. But it starts with the parents. And, that’s my message to the parents and to the adults. We just gotta come together and let it be about the kids. If we can save the kids, we can save this next generation.

]]>According to the Christmas story in the Bible, angels proclaimed “peace on earth” when they announced the birth of Jesus. In 1967, in a Christmas Eve sermon, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said that “we neither have peace within nor peace without.” How do contemporary Christians understand Christmas as a season of peace in today’s often chaotic world? Managing editor Kim Lawton talks with evangelical teacher and writer Nancy Guthrie in Nashville and with UCC pastor Otis Moss III in Chicago about what peace on earth means to them and what it requires of twenty-first-century Christian communities.

]]>“In more than 100 years of living and working in this country it was the first time the Sikh community entered national attention. It was the first time we stood in the national spotlight. It took a butchering for it to happen but it was a moment when the kind of love and support that was expressed was something that made Sikhs feel like they too were seen as fellow Americans.” Watch more of our interview with Valarie Kaur, a Sikh activist and founding director of Groundswell.

]]>There were demonstrations all across the country in reaction to the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, which has prompted a national discussion about race, violence, and justice. Watch our discussion about the religious community’s reaction with managing editor Kim Lawton and Rev. Romal Tune, founder of the non-profit group Faith for Change and author of God’s Graffiti: Inspiring Stories for Teens.

BOB ABERNETHY, host: More about the week’s religion and ethics news now from Kim Lawton, managing editor of this program, and David Gibson, national reporter for Religion News Service, who joins us from New York. Welcome to you both. David, out of all the tragedy in Colorado there has emerged another debate about gun control. Should it be considered a pro-life, a right-to-life issue like abortion? What are people saying?

DAVID GIBSON (Religion News Service): Well, this debate, Bob, was really prompted in the hours after the shooting by a column by Father James Martin, a Jesuit at America magazine, popular author, who wrote an essay saying, look, gun control and gun violence is a pro-life issue as much as abortion, as the death penalty, as euthanasia, and pro-lifers, traditional pro-lifers should get behind it in that context. Well, of course, again, of all the many debates that have come out of this horrific episode that opened up another branch in the moral and religious realm in our society, with a lot of people pushing back and saying no, abortion is the paramount pro-life issue. Anything else would be a distraction. So you kind of had an interesting paradox almost of pro-life folks who are arguing for restrictions on abortion saying there should be no restrictions on guns. And then you had a lot of liberals who favor the right to abortion saying no, we should have restrictions on guns.

KIM LAWTON, managing editor: And it sort of highlights a debate that’s been going on among evangelicals and Catholics in particular about this hierarchy of the life issues. And we saw this also in the discussions between the nuns and the Vatican. Some people say if everything is pro-life then it really loses the meaning and that there is a hierarchy of life issues and abortion should be at the top and these other issues shouldn’t. So this situation sort of highlighted that ongoing debate.

ABERNETHY: David, another discussion or debate that came out of the Colorado thing was whether what happened was evil or whether whatever happened is the kind of thing that we ought to be able and should do something about so that it won’t happen in the future, that we have the power to act and repair the world if we can, as opposed to being helpless if it’s evil and nothing we can do about it.

GIBSON: Yeah, and Bob, it almost kind of goes back to the old faith-versus-works debate in Christian theology about, look, was this just a spiritual crisis, a triumph of evil, almost demonic possession some would say, that you really have no control about? This is “suffering happens.” Evil happens in the world. It’s about how we deal with that in the aftermath. Or whether, look, it’s not just about praying for victims and praying to hope that this doesn’t happen again, but also working as believers to, as you say, repair the world, to institute perhaps better gun control laws or make public policies that would prevent this kind of gun violence from happening again. You had a real fierce, really religious debate at the heart of this.

ABERNETHY: Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, Monsignor William Lynn became the first Catholic official in the country to be convicted of a crime for covering up sex abuse by some of the priests that he supervised—three to six years he got. David, Kim, what’s being said about the severity of that sentence?

LAWTON: Well, you had some people arguing that maybe this was too severe. One of the priests that he was accused of sheltering got less time than he did, so there was some concern about that. But also in a week when you also saw the Penn State punishments coming down, there was some discussion about accountability, and is it institutions that should be held accountable or individuals, and who all is harmed? And certainly we saw with the Catholic Church there have been some concerns by some of the victims groups that there hasn’t been enough accountability at the top of the institution, and so that came out again this week.

ABERNETHY: And at Penn State it seemed like, to many people, like a kind of a blanket punishment rather than, as you say, singling out the people at the very top who could be held responsible.

LAWTON: Well, and there are some in the Catholic Church that would argue that a lot of people in the Church also ended up suffering the consequences of the situation.

ABERNETHY: Many thanks to Kim Lawton of Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly and David Gibson of Religion News Service.

Protesters outside gun store: What do we want? Sign the code. What do we want? Sign the code.

LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: This is a rare site these days—protesters outside a gun shop. It’s called Delia’s, and it’s in North Philadelphia. The organizers are religious leaders from many different faiths. There are also people of faith protesting the protesters, like Bill Grumbine.

BILL GRUMBINE: Well, I am not here to demonstrate against the gun store. I’m here to show support for the gun store, and I always have a Bible with me.

SEVERSON: Both sides say gun violence is a moral issue, and both rely on their religious views to support their opposing positions. Pastor David Tatgenhorst and Bishop Dwayne Royster say they’re not against guns or gun ownership but can no longer keep silent about gun violence.

PASTOR DAVID TATGENHORST (St. Luke United Methodist Church, Bryn Mawr, Penn.): Our coalition of pastors and rabbis and different religious leaders has just become so appalled that we’re so tired of burying young people and policemen. It’s just senseless what’s happening.

BISHOP DWAYNE ROYSTER (Living Water United Church of Christ, North Philadelphia): The numbers of handgun-related crimes and murders in the city of Philadelphia is larger than that of most industrialized countries.

SEVERSON: So these pastors who have preached against gun violence from the pulpit have joined an interfaith group called Heeding God’s Call in cities in Pennsylvania and Maryland, and they have taken their message to the streets. It’s aimed at gun store owners, and it asks them to sign a code of conduct designed to stop so-called “straw purchases.” That’s where a private citizen buys guns with the intent of reselling them on the street to someone who cannot legally purchase firearms.

ROYSTER: Whenever they sell a gun through a straw purchase, there’s potentially a body at the end of that gun.

SEVERSON: The same code of conduct was signed by Walmart, the largest seller of firearms in the country.

ROYSTER: What we’re asking the gun shop owners to do is to do something moral and ethical in terms of their behavior, by being responsible not just for making money for themselves, but to be responsible for the community in which they find themselves, to make sure that guns go to only those who legally have a right to own them and to be able to use them.

SEVERSON: Heeding God’s Call staged regular protests, sit-ins, and prayer vigils at this Philadelphia gun store called Colosimo’s. The interfaith ministers were responding to a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms study showing that over 400 guns from Colosimo’s had been used in crimes. In fact, 12 interfaith ministers including Tatgenhorst were arrested for obstruction and conspiracy and spent a night in jail. Then they pleaded their case to the judge.

TATGENHORST: The judge listened to this, and she acquitted us. Our argument was that we were trying to prevent a greater harm by breaking a smaller law.

SEVERSON: A few months later, Colosimo’s lost its license to sell guns, a victory for Heeding God’s Call.

PASTOR RUSS TENHOFF (Safe Harbor Ministry, Baltimore): I already have the Glock. I already have the 1911.

SEVERSON: When the Baltimore chapter of Heeding God’s Call tried to close down Clyde’s Sports Shop after complaints of selling guns to straw purchasers, Pastor Russ Tenoff was there to defend the store. One of the owners, Bill Blamberg, says he won’t sign the code because it violates his customers’ privacy. But he knows some people get guns who shouldn’t.

BILL BLAMBERG (Clyde’s Sports Shop): And I’ve had this happen a couple times. A guy comes in, you know he’s got a police record. He can’t buy one, right? He looks at this gun. It’s $549. He says, “I’ll give you a thousand dollars if I can take it today.” Now I’m not saying some dealers don’t do that, but Clyde’s don’t do that.

TENHOFF: If we could eliminate all guns I would be all for that. But the fact of the matter is until Jesus puts his feet on the Mount of Olives and then peace reigns over the whole planet, we’re going to have to protect ourselves and even protect the people around us, and if the criminals have guns, then we need to have them.

SEVERSON: One thing is certain: there is no shortage of guns in the US—as many as 300 million at the latest count. In some circles, owning a gun appears to be the patriotic thing to do. For those who predicted a rash of gun control laws after the Tucson shooting—barely a whisper. A few weeks after the shooting, the governor of Utah signed a bill proclaiming the first official state gun, and the University of Texas is about to become the second major school after the University of Utah to allow students to carry concealed weapons on campus. Clyde Wilcox is a professor of government at Georgetown University and author of several books on subjects like gun control and the Christian right.

PROFESSOR CLYDE WILCOX (Georgetown University): The interesting thing is we’ve come to the point where the debate is over whether you can carry a weapon in a bar, in a church, in a gymnasium, which were the places in the past where we thought maybe you don’t want to have a gun because fights can break out or people can become inflamed. So it’s really on the edge that we’re having this whole discussion now.

ROYSTER: Jesus ministered to the most marginalized, and he didn’t do it with a gun. He didn’t do it with violence. He did it with love.

TENHOFF: I have been a man who has turned the other cheek. You’re talking to a man who has been jumped by gangs and beat. You’re talking to a man who’s been in several knife fights. You’re talking to a man who has been shot at, and you’re talking to a man who has grown up in the drug-infested violence of this area, and I have turned the other cheek and I have taken beatings. But I’m not going to let my little boy suffer violence. I’m going to act. I’m not going to let my wife be raped. I’m going to act.

SEVERSON: A number of mainline churches have had longstanding positions in favor of some kind of gun control, but for the most part churches have been noticeably quiet. In fact, an increasing number of pastors are now speaking out in support of the Second Amendment, saying it was inspired by God.

WILCOX: I talk to a fair number of pastors who kind of take a fundamentalist reading of the Second Amendment the way they take a fundamentalist reading of the Bible.

TATGENHORST: It happens, and I know that I have had colleagues who are scared to talk about guns. They’re afraid that people in the pews will object to that.

WILCOX: Well, the mainline congregations are declining. Their populations are aging, and so the question is what issues do you want to take on that might possibly divide your congregation? Would you take a risk of losing 10 percent of your members in a declining church by taking the prophetic stand about gun control at a time when gun control laws are probably not going to be stiffened?

SEVERSON: Rick Hellberg is a member of Pastor Tatgenhorst’s church. He supports his pastor’s position against gun violence but, unlike the pastor, he sees the Second Amendment as sacred. His rationale is quite common among opponents of government-sponsored gun control.

RICK HELLBERG: If part of my right to hold a gun is to protect myself from the potential tyranny of a government or a standing army—if that’s the case, then I should probably be able to be armed almost as well as those standing armies are. The NRA [National Rifle Association] takes the position that if we give an inch Washington will take a mile.

SEVERSON: But this isn’t coming from Washington. It’s coming from faith leaders who are trying to do what they say Washington and state governments haven’t done—curb gun violence.

ROYSTER: We’re not trying to prevent their business. We’re not trying to prevent them from selling guns. We’re not trying to prevent people who have a legal right to possess guns from possessing them. We just want to make sure they don’t get into the hands of the wrong people.

SEVERSON: While religious voices against gun control are getting louder, so are those on the other side…

Protesters: Sign the code!

SEVERSON: …who think that something needs to be done to stop the killing.

BOB ABERNETHY, host: This past week in Congress, Democratic Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy of New York introduced a bill that would ban the sale of all gun magazines that can hold more than 10 bullets. The clip used in the Tucson shootings held 30. But as the popularity of gun shows suggests, any attempt to tighten gun laws faces strong opposition. Republicans control the House of Representatives, and no Republican supports the McCarthy bill. One man who understands the politics of gun legislation is Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign Against Gun Violence. He’s a Republican and was three times elected mayor of Fort Wayne, Indiana. Welcome to you.

ABERNETHY: So what are the realities on this? A bill has gone into the House. Another one’s going into the Senate next week. But realistically does either one of them have any chance?

HELMKE: I believe they do. I think this time it could be a different response.

ABERNETHY: Why?

HELMKE: For a number of reasons. It was a member of Congress that was attacked. That’s one. Secondly, the bill that we’re talking about relates directly to the Tucson shooting. The individual was stopped, not because the police responded or someone else with a gun responded. He was stopped because the clip ran out of bullets. If he had run out of bullets after 10 instead of 30, less people are injured. And the other thing is this showed how weak the laws on the books are. No law was broken. Even with his dangerousness to his fellow students, no law was broken until he pulled the trigger the first time. So I think this time they might treat this not as a Second Amendment wedge issue. They might treat this as a public safety issue, and just as they banned cop-killer bullets and plastic guns that don’t show up in metal detectors, maybe they’ll say these high-capacity clips should also be banned.

ABERNETHY: But isn’t it the case that the overwhelming majority of the American people, who the people in Congress are supposed to represent, feel that any restriction on gun ownership is wrong?

HELMKE: And that’s not true. Actually, the one poll that sometimes is used to say support for gun control is dropping say that now only 46 or 50 percent support stronger measures as opposed to 75 percent 15, 20 years ago. But that’s still showing that a number of people support in general gun control, and when you ask about specific measures, even licensing people to have guns like we license drivers—66 percent support. Background checks on all sales, restrictions on semi-automatic weapons, those things have strong support when you ask the individual questions.

ABERNETHY: When you ask the individual. And how about the McCarthy bill?

HELMKE: McCarthy bill, we’ve polled it three different times. Fifty-eight percent support it. Fifty percent of the American people strongly support it. It’s hard to find that kind of intensity for any kind of question.

ABERNETHY: This past week there was the announcement of a coalition of something like 24 religious groups to support some kind of gun …

HELMKE: Faiths United to Prevent Gun Violence was announced this last week on Martin Luther King Day. The next day they were part of the news conference supporting Carolyn McCarthy’s bill. And I think this is important. This is part of what’s going to change the dynamic. We need leadership from the top, from the president speaking on this. But more importantly we need our people in the communities telling their elected officials do something about gun violence, and the faith community plays such an important role in raising the moral issue, raising that issue with their congregations, and getting people to speak up.

ABERNETHY: After the Tucson shootings there was some comment about gun control from some people in the religious community, but there was an awful lot of silence, too. Did that disappoint you?

HELMKE: Silence from anybody is disappointing, and I think you know with some people it’s always wait until folks are out of the hospital, wait until the funerals are over. But I keep telling people this is an issue I talk about every day. I say the same thing every day, and we need more people saying the same thing. To allow 30,000 people to be killed by guns every year in this country, another 70,000 to be injured by guns every year in this country, to have this almost worship of guns that occurs and the violence that flows from that is something we shouldn’t be tolerating in our society.

ABERNETHY: But for you personally, is this a religious issue?

HELMKE: It does fit into my religious tradition. I went to a Lutheran grade school growing up. We talked about nonviolence. The story of the garden of Gethsemane is put down that sword, you know, is what Jesus is telling the disciple. That’s the lesson we need to learn, and it really gets into how do we relate to our fellowman? Do we live in a state of fear of everyone we’re dealing with, or do we feel that we’re a community of faith and that you respect the other, that you deal with the other, or do we bring a gun to every confrontation?

ABERNETHY: But isn’t it the case that there are a lot of religious people who very much like guns, too?

HELMKE: And I’m not anti-gun. I’m not against the gun. But what the gun does to so many people, making that gun so easily available to dangerous people, like the Tucson shooter, irresponsible people. You know, we all sin and fall short of the glory of God. We need to restrict the easy access to this. Again, even Carolyn McCarthy’s bill isn’t talking about the gun. It’s talking about the high-capacity ammunition that’s not used to hunt, not used for personal protection, only used to kill a lot of people quickly.

ABERNETHY: Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign Against Gun Violence. Many thanks.